Keeping students motivated in a remote course is a common challenge not only in remote writing courses, but across various subject matters. Without in-person contact, it may often be more difficult for faculty to pick up on students’ nonverbal cues, which may often signal their disinterest or unenthusiasm. The resources below offer tips and suggestions for keeping students motivated in remote courses.
Student Motivation & Engagement in Online Courses
- Motivating Online Students. 21 Dec. 2018.
Northeastern’s Center for Advancing Teaching and Learning Through Research reviews motivating students primarily from the perspective of Miller’s book on Minds Online: Teaching effectively with technology where they offer tips for increasing students’ competence, relatedness and autonomy.
- “Provide Multiple Means of Engagement.” CAST, Universal Design for Learning Guidelines Version 2.2. , 12 Jan. 2018.
A part of the Universal Design Learning website, the page offers “guidelines and checkpoints” for keeping students engaged in all learning environments.
- Cortez, Marcos. “Breaking the Ice With Student-Made Videos.” Edutopia, George Lucas Educational Foundation, 21 June 2019.
Geared more towards K-12, this resource offers suggestions on engaging students with student-made videos. Many of the approaches can be applied to higher education as well.
- Elmagraby, Norah. “Engagement Tools for Remote Teaching.” HASTAC, 15 Mar. 2020.
In this blogpost, the author provides three tools:
- Poll Everywhere (for polling and creating word clouds)
- Kaizena (for adding audio feedback to papers)
- PlayPosit (for incorporating assessments into videos) to keep students engaged with the course content in an online or hybrid course.
Student Motivation & Engagement in Hybrid Courses
- McMurtrie, Beth. “Teaching: How To Engage Students in a Hybrid Classroom.” The Chronicle of Higher Education, 9 July 2020.
In this edition of the Chronicle of Higher Education, McMurtire provides advice on teaching in a hybrid classroom, and offers practical resources for doing so.